We wished upon parallel lines
by renrenren3
Summary: The first few weeks are hard, but so are the next few years. Or, a collection of texts that Sherlock doesn't send.


Sherlock had anticipated that the first few weeks would tbe the hardest: the grief would be still fresh, there were all the funeral arrangments to make, 221b would still be hounded by the paparazzi... He's wrong. The first few weeks are hard, but so are the next few years.

_I'm not dead. -SH_

He types the first message while John is standing over his grave. This far he can only hear one out of three words that John is saying, but for him it's more than enough. He doesn't need words any more, he can read John like an open book by now, and he's at the same time hoping and dreading that John could be capable of doing the same, that John knew he didn't jump, not really.

When John says it, asks Sherlock not to be dead, with his hand on the tombstone, Sherlock is so close to stepping out of his hiding place. Maybe John realized that Sherlock is still alive. Maybe his elaborate ruse wasn't enough to fool him. But then it may not have been enough for Moriarty's men, there may have been a contingency plan that Sherlock didn't learn about, and John would be in danger once again.

Sherlock pauses with his thumb hovering over the 'send' button and watches John walk away. He doesn't send the message, but doesn't delete it either.

_You forgot the milk. -SH_

The messages to John become a regular occurrence. Sherlock himself doesn't know why he does it. The most logical explanation he can offer is that he misses human contact. As brief as his acquaintance with John was, he developed a friendship for the first time in his life, for once he had someone he could talk to - talk with, even, instead of talking iat/i like he usually does. It's a lot to give up on.

He gets a room at the opposite end of Baker Street and watches as John tries to get on with his life, balancing a new job and a new girlfriend with the shards of his old friendship. John walks right in front of his windows whenever he goes grocery shopping, and he's always doubling back because he forgot something. Even if Sherlock wasn't Sherlock, it's obvious that John has something on his mind. He keeps the job, loses the girlfriend, gets another girlfriend, loses her too.

_Stop clinging on to the past. -SH_

Sherlock doesn't really have a right to give any advice about that. Even Molly points it out to him, it's been months and he's still sitting in this little room just across the street from where his old life was. It's past time that he moved on. Molly's right, really, even though it's not in Sherlock's nature to admit that other people are right, but she looks at him right in the eye and she knows she's right anyway. Sherlock's clinging to the past just as much as John, if not more.

Sometimes he gets the feeling that everything would have been so much simpler if he'd just jumped. A brief rush of adrenaline and a relatively painless death - that would have been all. John's distress and his safety aren't a variable in this equation. Sherlock himself had been okay with the thought of dying, if it meant saving his only friend. Instead he'd accepted Molly's help and lingered on, like some sort of unquiet spirit, forever stuck in limbo and forced to watch as John went on with his life.

_Going away for a while. -SH_

France is stupid. Switzerland is boring. Germany is only marginally better, if only for the triple homicide, but even solving elaborate crimes doesn't have the same appeal as it once did. Sherlock gets all his info from the papers and from a very loquacious PA who thinks he's some English prince, then sends the police an email from the culprit's own laptop and gets on the first plane out of the country.

The papers in Austria are full of tales about the arrest and about the 'ghost detective' who hacked into the man's email account. Sherlock scoffs, because it's not hacking if you know the password, which was his dog's name, some people are unbelievable. He wonders if John's reading a similar version of the story in the Times, and his fingers flit over his phone's keyboard.

_Are you thinking about me? -SH_

He goes back to England, one year after his death. Three hundred and sixty-one days, to be exact. He's careful to alter his appearance just in case there are reporters loitering around Baker Street to write an anniversary piece (short red hair, sunglasses, a sports jacket instead of his usual coat) but it seems as if the press has grown tired of Sherlock Holmes. There's just a paragraph, squeezed between a story about a new pet shop and a book signing.

John remembers, of course. He visits the graveyard with Mrs Hudson, and she leans against her arm and walks more slowly than before. Sherlock knows that her hip has been troubling her even more of late, she'll probably need surgery soon, and hopes they remembered to bring an umbrella because it's going to rain. They did. Sherlock didn't. He stands in the rain, watching the two of them huddled in front of an empty grave. John pats the headstone before he goes, and Sherlock feels oddly warm despite the rain trickling into his clothes.

_Still not dead. -SH_

Molly points out that Sherlock is showing signs of obsession, but Sherlock refuses to move out of the room in Baker Street. He still keeps tabs on John, even though it's been months and if John was in any danger he would have seen the signs by now. To Molly, Sherlock just says that he likes knowing what John is up to. She doesn't buy it, not one bit, but whenever she suggests telling John, Sherlock shoots her down.

He's got a folder full of unsent messages, any of them would have done the trick. It would be the easiest thing to let his thumb slip and send one of them, to send all of them, to go knocking at John's door in the middle of the night. But Sherlock can't, because he knows John better than anyone else, and he knows that John is more likely to shut that door on his face, and he would deserve it because three years are just too much.

_I'm sorry. Forgive me? -SH_

He doesn't send the message.


End file.
